03/04/2011
Sundays are so boring in this part of the world, I am living. Hardly possible it is to listen to a bird’s or a girl’s song. I can’t even start my University assignment, I am procrastinating. My last resort was googling and I found this cool stuff while googling. The history of Emahoy(nun) Tsege Mariam and her composition. Emahoy(Nun) Tsege now over 85 years old is the first Ethiopian classical musical composer , now residing in an Ethiopian Orthodox Church Monastery in the Holyland Jerusalem, Israel.
Emahoy Tsegue in Bethlehem
A short biography of Emahoy(nun) Tsege Mariam available on this web (http://www.emahoymusicfoundation.org/home.html) contains the following information , “Yewubdar Gebru was born in Addis Abeba on December 12, 1923 to a privileged family. Her father Kentiba Gebru and her mother Kassaye Yelemtu both had a place in high society. Yewubdar was sent to Switzerland at the age of six along with her sister Senedu Gebru. Both attended a girls' boarding school where Yewubdar studied the violin and then the piano. She gave her first violin recital at the age of ten. She returned to Ethiopia in 1933 to continue her studies at the Empress Menen Secondary School. In 1937 young Yewubdar and her family were taken prisoners of war by the Italians and deported to the island of Asinara, north of Sardinia, and later to Mercogliano near Naples.”
Young Yewubdar secretly fled Addis Abeba at the age of 19 to enter the Guishen Mariam monastery in the Wello region where she had once before visited with her mother. She served two years in the monastery and was ordained a nun at the age of 21. Emahoy left Ethiopia following her mother's death in 1984 and fled to Jerusalem, Israel because socialist doctrine in Ethiopia during the reign of Dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam attacked her religious beliefs. Emahoy is now 85 years old and she plays the piano at the monastery nearly seven hours a day, she continues to write new solo piano compositions. Emahoy has been recognized by many music critics around the world and there is a growing interest in her life and her music by international media including Le Monde, BBC, and Canada TV, the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Foundation Website explains.
Her composition that I uploaded above meets my recency (The homeless wonderer) and is a good pill for me to finish this unexciting Sunday.
I hope to meet her when I go to Jerusalem in the near future.
0 comments:
Post a Comment